Refugee Art Project

Since late 2010, I have been deeply involved with The Refugee Art Project, which is a group that I helped to found. This group provides art workshops for asylum seekers and refugees in the Villawood detention centre and has visited other centres around the country. The artworks are then curated and shown in public exhibitions, online and in self-published zines. The intention is to facilitate the agency and self expression of asylum seekers and refugees and to activate art in the struggle for refugee rights.

We have a large number of participants from such countries as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Kurdish regions of the Middle East, Syria, Sri Lanka, Burma, Indonesia and other places. Two years seems to be the average length of time that our participants have spent in detention, with some spending a longer period than that.

The Refugee Art Project aims to deepen public understanding about the asylum seeker issue and the realities of Australia’s detention regime. You can visit our website here or follow us on facebook here.